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移除书签No More Parades · Part II · Chapter 2 2 (2/8)
Suddenly Sylvia began to laugh … As she began to laugh she had remembered … The alabaster image in the nun’s chapel at Birkenhead the vision of which had just presented itself to her, had been the recumbent tomb of an honourable Mrs. Tremayne-Warlock … She was said to have sinned in her youth … And her husband had never forgiven her … That was what the nuns said … She said aloud:
“A sign …” Then to herself: “Blessed Mary! … You’ve given it me in the neck … Yet you could not name a father for your child, and I can name two … I’m going mad … Both I and he are going to go mad …”
She thought of dashing an enormous patch of red upon either cheek. Then she thought it would be rather melodramatic …
She made in the smoking-room, whilst she was waiting for both Tietjens and Cowley to come back from the telephone, another pact … This time with Father Consett in heaven! She was fairly sure that Father Consett—and quite possibly other of the heavenly powers—wanted Christopher not to be worried, so that he could get on with the war—or because he was a good sort of dullish man such as the heavenly authorities are apt to like … Something like that …
She was by that time fairly calm again. You cannot keep up fits of emotion by the hour: at any rate, with her, the fits of emotion were periodical and unexpected, though her colder passion remained always the same … Thus, when Christopher had come into Lady Sachse’s that afternoon, she had been perfectly calm. He had mooned through a number of officers, both French and English, in a great octagonal, bluish salon where Lady Sachse gave her teas, and had come to her side with just a nod—the merest inflection of the head! … Perowne had melted away somewhere behind the disagreeable duchess. The general, very splendid and white-headed and scarlet-tipped and gilt, had also borne down upon her at that … At the sight of Perowne with her he had been sniffing and snorting whilst he talked to the young nobleman—a dark fellow in blue with a new belt who seemed just a shade too theatrical, he being chauffeur to a marshal of France and first cousin and nearest relative, except for parents and grandparents, of the prospective bride …
The general had told her that he was running the show pretty strong on purpose because he thought it might do something to cement the Entente Cordiale. But it did not seem to be doing it. The French—officers, soldiers and women—kept pretty well all on the one side of the room—the English on the other. The French were as a rule more gloomy than men and women are expected to be. A marquis of sorts—she understood that these were all Bonapartist nobility—having been introduced to her had distinguished himself no more than by saying that, for his part, he thought the duchess was right, and by saying that to Perowne who, knowing no French, had choked exactly as if his tongue had suddenly got too big for his mouth …
She had not heard what the duchess—a very disagreeable duchess who sat on a sofa and appeared savagely careworn—had been saying, so that she had inclined herself, in the courtly manner that at school she had been taught to reserve for the French legitimist nobility, but that she thought she might expend upon a rather state function even for the Bonapartists, and had replied that without the least doubt the duchess had the right of the matter … The marquis had given her from dark eyes one long glance, and she had returned it with a long cold glance that certainly told him she was meat for his masters. It extinguished him …
Tietjens had staged his meeting with herself remarkably well. It was the sort of lymphatic thing he could do, so that, for the fifth of a minute, she wondered if he had any feelings or emotions at all. But she knew that he had … The general, at any rate, bearing down upon them with satisfaction, had remarked:
“Ah, I see you’ve seen each other before today … I thought perhaps you wouldn’t have found time before, Tietjens … Your draft must be a great nuisance …”
Tietjens said without expression:
“Yes, we have seen each other before … I made time to call at Sylvia’s hotel, sir.”
It was at Tietjens’ terrifying expressionlessness, at that completely being up to a situation, that the first wave of emotion had come over her … For, till that very moment, she had been merely sardonically making the constatation that there was not a single presentable man in the room … There was not even one that you could call a gentleman … for you cannot size up the French … ever! … But, suddenly, she was despairing! … How, she said to herself, could she ever move, put emotion into, this lump! It was like trying to move an immense mattress filled with feathers. You pulled at one end, but the whole mass sagged down and remained immobile until you seemed to have no strength at all … Until virtue went out from you …
It was as if he had the evil eye: or some special protector. He was so appallingly competent, so appallingly always in the centre of his own picture.
The general said, rather joyfully:
“Then you can spare a minute, Tietjens, to talk to the duchess! About coal! … For goodness’ sake, man, save the situation! I’m worn out …”
Sylvia bit the inside of her lower lip—she never bit her lip itself!—to keep herself from exclaiming aloud. It was just exactly what should not happen to Tietjens at that juncture … She heard the general explaining to her, in his courtly manner, that the duchess was holding up the whole ceremony because of the price of coal. The general loved her desperately. Her, Sylvia! In quite a proper manner for an elderly general … But he would go to no small extremes in her interests! So would his sister!
She looked hard at the room to get her senses into order again. She said:
“It’s like a Hogarth picture …”
The undissolvable air of the eighteenth century that the French contrive to retain in all their effects kept the scene singularly together. On a sofa sat the duchess, relatives leaning over her. She was a duchess with one of those impossible names: Beauchain-Radigutz or something like it. The bluish room was octagonal and vaulted, up to a rosette in the centre of the ceiling. English officers and V.A.D.s of some evident presence opened out to the left, French military and very black-clothed women of all ages, but all apparently widows, opened out to the right, as if the duchess shone down a sea at sunset. Beside her on the sofa you did not see Lady Sachse: leaning over her you did not see the prospective bride. This stoutish, unpresentable, coldly venomous woman, in black clothes so shabby that they might have been grey tweed, extinguished other personalities as the sun conceals planets. A fattish, brilliantined personality, in mufti, with a scarlet rosette, stood sideways to the duchess’s right, his hands extended forward as if in an invitation to a dance; an extremely squat lady, also apparently a widow, extended, on the left of the duchess, both her black-gloved hands, as if she too were giving an invitation to the dance …
The general, with Sylvia beside him, stood glorious in the centre of the clearing that led to the open doorway of a much smaller room. Through the doorway you could see a table with a white damask cloth; a silver-gilt inkpot, fretted, like a porcupine with pens, a fat, flat leather case for the transportation of documents and two notaries: one in black, fat, and bald-headed; one in blue uniform, with a shining monocle, and a brown moustache that he continued to twirl …
Looking round that scene Sylvia’s humour calmed her and she heard the general say:
“She’s supposed to walk on my arm to that table and sign the settlement … We’re supposed to be the first to sign it together … But she won’t. Because of the price of coal. It appears that she has hothouses in miles. And she thinks the English have put up the price of coal as if … damn it you’d think we did it just to keep her hothouse stoves out.”
The duchess had delivered, apparently, a vindictive, cold, calm, and uninterruptible oration on the wickedness of her country’s allies as people who should have allowed France to be devastated and the flower of her youth slain in order that they might put up the price of a comestible that was absolutely needed in her life. There was no arguing with her. There was no British soul there who both knew anything about economics and spoke French. And there she sat, apparently immovable. She did not refuse to sign the marriage contract. She just made no motion to go to it and, apparently, the resulting marriage would be illegal if that document were brought to her!
The general said:
“Now, what the deuce will Christopher find to say to her? He’ll find something because he could talk the hind legs off anything. But what the deuce will it be? …”
It almost broke Sylvia’s heart to see how exactly Christopher did the right thing. He walked up that path to the sun and made in front of the duchess a little awkward nick with his head and shoulders that was rather more like a curtsy than a bow. It appeared that he knew the duchess quite well … as he knew everybody in the world quite well. He smiled at her and then became just suitably grave. Then he began to speak an admirable, very old-fashioned French with an atrocious English accent. Sylvia had no idea that he knew a word of the language—that she herself knew very well indeed. She said to herself that upon her word it was like hearing Chateaubriand talk—if Chateaubriand had been brought up in an English hunting country … Of course Christopher would cultivate an English accent: to show that he was an English country gentleman. And he would speak correctly—to show that an English Tory can do anything in the world if he wants to …
The British faces in the room looked blank: the French faces turned electrically upon him. Sylvia said:
“Who would have thought … ?” The duchess jumped to her feet and took Christopher’s arm. She sailed with him imperiously past the general and past Sylvia. She was saying that that was just what she would have expected of a milor Anglais … Avec un spleen tel que vous l’avez!
Christopher, in short, had told the duchess that as his family owned almost the largest stretch of hothouse coal-burning land in England and her family the largest stretch of hothouses in the sister-country of France, what could they do better than make an alliance? He would instruct his brother’s manager to see that the duchess was supplied for the duration of hostilities and as long after as she pleased with all the coal needed for her glass at the pithead prices of the Middlesbrough-Cleveland district as the prices were on the 3rd of August, nineteen fourteen … He repeated: “The pithead price … livrable au prix de l’houillemaigre dans l’enceinte des puits de ma campagne.” … Much to the satisfaction of the duchess, who knew all about prices … A triumph for Christopher was at that moment so exactly what Sylvia thought she did not want that she decided to tell the general that Christopher was a Socialist. That might well take him down a peg or two in the general’s esteem … for the general’s arm-patting admiration for Tietjens, the man who did not argue but acted over the price of coal, was as much as she could bear … But, thinking it over in the smoking-room after dinner, by which time she was a good deal more aware of what she did want, she was not so certain that she had done what she wanted … Indeed, even in the octagonal room during the economical festivities that followed the signatures, she had been far from certain that she had not done almost exactly what she did not want …
It had begun with the general’s exclaiming to her:
“You know your man’s the most unaccountable fellow … He wears the damn-shabbiest uniform of any officer I ever have to talk to. He’s said to be unholily hard up … I even heard he had a cheque sent back to the club … Then he goes and makes a princely gift like that—just to get Levin out of ten minutes’ awkwardness … I wish to goodness I could understand the fellow … He’s got a positive genius for getting all sorts of things out of the most beastly muddles … Why, he’s even been useful to me … And then he’s got a positive genius for getting into the most disgusting messes … You’re too young to have heard of Dreyfus … But I always say that Christopher is a regular Dreyfus … I shouldn’t be astonished if he didn’t end by being drummed out of the army … which heaven forfend!”
It had been then that Sylvia had said:
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that Christopher was a Socialist?”
For the first time in her life Sylvia saw her husband’s godfather look grotesque … His jaw dropped down, his white hair became disarrayed, and he dropped his pretty cap with all the gold oakleaves and the scarlet. When he rose from picking it up his thin old face was purple and distorted. She wished she hadn’t said it: she wished she hadn’t said it. He exclaimed:
“Christopher! … A So …” He gasped as if he could not pronounce the word. He said: “Damn it all! … I’ve loved that boy … He’s my only godson … His father was my best friend … I’ve watched over him … I’d have married his mother if she would have had me … Damn it all, he’s down in my will as residuary legatee after a few small things left to my sister and my collection of horns to the regiment I commanded …”
Sylvia—they were sitting on the sofa the duchess had left—patted him on the forearm and said:
“But general … godfather …”
“It explains everything,” he said with a mortification that was painful. His white moustache drooped and trembled. “And what makes it all the worse—he’s never had the courage to tell me his opinions.” He stopped, snorted and exclaimed: “By God, I will have him drummed out of the service … By God, I will. I can do that much …”
His grief so shut him in on himself that she could say nothing to him …
“You tell me he seduced the little Wannop girl … The last person in the world he should have seduced … Ain’t there millions of other women? … He got you sold up, didn’t he? … Along with keeping a girl in a tobacco-shop … By jove, I almost lent him … offered to lend him money on that occasion … You can forgive a young man for going wrong with women … We all do … We’ve all set up girls in tobacco-shops in our time … But, damn it all, if the fellow’s a Socialist it puts a different complexion … I could forgive him even for the little Wannop girl, if he wasn’t … But … Good God, isn’t it just the thing that a dirty-minded Socialist would do? … To seduce the daughter of his father’s oldest friend, next to me … Or perhaps Wannop was an older friend than me …”
He had calmed himself a little—and he was not such a fool. He looked at her now with a certain keenness in his blue eyes that showed no sign of age. He said:
